This was a glorious day, heading for Amosund ( 58:03.9N, 011:45.5E), at the northern end of Tjorn Island. Bright sun and good Force 4 winds to push us along for much of the day.

 

Just after leaving the marina, whilst the crew were busy with putting away fenders and generally tidying up, I decided to have a bit of sport and threw in a spare fender and shouted ' man overboard'. Suffice to say that our fender was floating for some time, but we got 'him' in the end...

 

Today's run to Almosund was fairly short, so we decided to play sailing back and forth in a wide Fjord in the excellent winds, and practiced reefing, as well as just having a great sail, with Avis doing most of the helming, and giving the autopilot a well earned rest. We had a moments excitement when we decided to venture outside the protective 'reef' of islands and out to the 'real sea', just as the wind picked up to a good F5. The earlier reefing practice turned out to have been useful, and we also switched to Moondog's smaller self tacking jib to cut down the heel and make life a little easier.  The gusts soon passed and we were back in the fjord, and thinking of lunch.

 

This was the time to test the anchor, and we searched for and found an idyllic small bay, tucked in between several small islands, totally sheltered from the wind. With some trepidation we crept in , watching the depth and ensuring we would have enough room to swing on our anchor without hitting any of the surrounding little islands. With the spot chosen we went out and back in, hovered over our chosen spot and  dropped anchor. All went smoothly and the anchor held well. Lunch does not get much better than this, as we listened to a cuckoo call, and watched the sea birds around the boat, in a clear blue sky.

 

The reverse process of lifting anchor and getting out of our hideaway worked fine, and we were soon back on our way to Almosund enjoying the rest of the day's sail.